It is challenging for parents and the state to oversee and regulate sexual behavior between young children. While every child is unique and grows in their own way, there is a general range of behaviors characteristic of child development. From a legal and policy perspective, what is the difference between age-appropriate child sexual experimentation and actions that might be characterized as child-on-child sexual grooming? As professor Daryl Higgins asks in a recent article: “At what point does sexual play and natural, typical developmental exploration become problematic? Or harmful? Or abuse?”

Without a clear understanding of this distinction, children may be unnecessarily harmed. This can happen by inappropriately being accused of criminal behavior, or not being appropriately accused of criminal behavior. It can also occur when a child, for psychological or physiological reasons, is unable to follow a normative age-appropriate path of child development. Absent clarity, parents, and others who care for children, are unable to know exactly how to monitor children's behavior.